Individuals, institutions, and post office employees introduce items of mail into the postal system at local post office branches. Once the receiving post office branch is in possession of a mail piece, the mail piece begins a journey through a highly organized system. Mail received into the postal system at a local branch office is eventually transported to a centralized postal hub. There are in excess of 250 postal hubs in the United States. These “hubs” are known by alternative names including (i) processing and distribution centers, (ii) general mail facilities and (iii) mail distribution centers. Postal hubs are regional mail centers that service individual post office branches within a particular range of ZIP Codes. Typically, a postal hub services one or more “three-digit ZIP Code areas.” For example, the Central Massachusetts Processing and Distribution Center (also known as the “Worcester Facility”) services the local post office branches situated in all the ZIP Codes beginning with “014”, “015,” “016,” and “017.” That is, mail destined for or departing from a local branch office within a ZIP Code beginning with any one of the four sets of three digits in the previous sentence will, under normal circumstances, pass through the Worcester facility. The Worcester facility services more than two dozen towns, each with its own local branch office. The 250 plus hubs in the United States collectively service approximately five thousand individual postal branch offices.
Mail coming into and going out of the various local branch offices in a particular geographic region is processed through one or more hubs before delivery to its final destination. For instance, a mail piece originating in Southbridge, Mass. (01550) and destined for Littleton, Mass. (01460) is processed through the Worcester facility only (i.e., a single hub), because the ZIP Code of origin and the destination ZIP Code are both serviced by the Worcester hub. However, in many instances, a mail piece is processed through two hubs between the time of its introduction into the system and its ultimate delivery to an addressee. This is the case, for instance, when a mail piece is received at a branch office that is not serviced by the same hub that services the branch office responsible for delivery of the mail piece to the intended recipient. In such a case, a mail piece received at a branch office is transported to an “outgoing hub” where the mail piece is sorted and routed for transportation to an “incoming hub.” The incoming hub is the hub that services the local branch office responsible for delivery of the mail piece to the intended recipient. For example, a mail piece originating at Littleton, Mass. (01460) and destined for Owego, N.Y. (13827) is transported from Littleton, Mass. to the Worcester, Mass. facility (i.e., the outgoing hub). At the Worcester facility, the mail piece is sorted and deposited on an appropriate vehicle for transport to the postal hub at Binghamton, N.Y. (i.e., the incoming hub) because the Binghamton hub services the local post office branches beginning with “137,” “138,” and “139.” Once delivered to the Binghamton hub, the mail piece is sorted and delivered to the local, Owego, N.Y. branch office (13827) from which it is transported to the mailbox of the addressee, for example.
Mechanical, electronic and computer apparatus enable postal clerks to process large volumes of mail each day. Larger postal facilities (e.g., hubs) are equipped with rigid containers, bins on wheels, conveyor belts, forklifts, cranes, and other machinery to facilitate the handling of large quantities of mail. There are also segregating machines to separate a mixture of mail into different types.
Some first-class mail is precancelled. If not precancelled, mail pieces must go through a facer-canceler machine. Such a machine can process tens of thousands of letters an hour. Facing is the process of aligning letters so that the address side is facing the canceler, with the stamps, or other postage-related information (e.g., an indication that the depositor need not apply postage), in the same corner. The machine prints wavy black lines over the stamp, for example, canceling it so that it cannot be used again. Alongside the stamp is printed a circle containing the date, place, and time of stamping. The circle and wavy lines constitute the letter's postmark. Typically, mail pieces are canceled at a hub.
After postmarking is completed, mail pieces are ready to be sorted according to destination. Traditionally, clerks sorted mail pieces by hand according to destination, using racks of pigeonholes, called distribution cases. Increasingly, however, the sorting process has been automated.
The United States introduced ZIP (Zone Improvement Plan) Codes in 1963. Users of the mail service place a five-digit number (ZIP Code) at the end of the address. The first three digits identify the section of the country to which the mail piece is being sent, while the last two identify the specific post office or zone at the destination. ZIP Codes enable the use of optical and electronic reading and sorting equipment.
In the 1980's the United States Postal Service introduced a voluntary nine-digit ZIP Code system. Four additional digits were added to the original ZIP Code after a hyphen to speed automated sorting operations. Of the four additional numbers, the first two indicate a specific sector of a city or town such as a cluster of streets or large buildings. The second two numbers represent an even smaller segment such as one side of a city block, one floor of a large building, or a group of post office boxes.
Increasingly, tasks once performed manually are now performed mechanically, electronically and by computers. For instance, destination addresses once read by human beings who sorted mail pieces into compartments based on destination city, for example, are now read by machine (e.g., scanned by optical character recognition apparatus). An image of a destination address is captured and stored in computer memory. Character recognition algorithms analyze the captured image and resolve it into a string of alphanumeric data to generate signals that instruct sorting machines where to route individual mail pieces. Such systems have dramatically increased the efficiency of the postal system and the overall volume of mail that the system can handle.
Despite the technological advances of recent decades, postal management is still largely concerned with the efficient administration and deployment of large bodies of manpower, the organization of large transport fleets, many aspects of property management, and financial and economic problems, including revenue protection against unpaid or underpaid postage. Automation and computer technology have increasingly been exploited as a management aid with the realization that the postal, service operates within a commercial market where competition from private companies can be fierce and efficiency is the watchword.
A significant loss in postal revenue is associated with erroneous and fraudulent use of business reply mail licenses and postcodes. More specifically, business reply mail pieces consist, for example, of addressee-postage-paid postcards and envelopes that can be mailed by customers or prospects of the business reply postal customer free of charge to such customers and prospects. The business reply system is essentially a mechanism for “reversing the charges” from the sender to the recipient. In order for a business to be entitled to receive business reply mail, the business must (i) purchase a license, the number of which must appear on each mail piece to be received under that license and (ii) use a specific business reply postcode so that the business reply mail can be identified, tracked and counted by the postal service for subsequent billing to the business. In the United States, the license number is typically expressed as a permit number on the face of a postcard or envelope. When incorrect information appears on the face of a business reply mail piece revenue is lost because the postal service delivers, or makes attempts to deliver, the mail piece without any means of billing for the service.
Increasingly, but still on only about 20 percent of all business reply mail, at least postal code information is encoded in a customer bar code (also referred to as a customer locator code) that is typically printed on the front of a business reply mail piece. Currently, the customer bar code is a shorthand, machine readable indication, applied by the customer, as to the postal code information appearing on the front face of a business reply mail piece in addition to other information. The current practice of the postal system is to simply accept the information encoded in a customer bar code as true and accurate when it appears on a mail piece. To the extent that the postal code in the customer bar code and the human readable postal code on the front face of a business reply mail piece are contradictory, the default position is to accept the customer bar code as accurate. This approach is understandable from a statistical standpoint because human beings are typically going to be disconcerted by seeing a business reply postal code that does not match what they know to be their street postal code on the front face of the mail pieces; they will simply believe a mistake has been made and “correct” the “misinformation” to the street postal code with which they are comfortable. “Blind” encoding of the proper business reply postal code obviates erroneous attempts at “correction.” It will be appreciated that incorrect or incomplete encoding of such bar codes, combined with the postal system's complete reliance on the information contained therein, is another source of postal revenue loss.
Some large businesses are assigned a dedicated business reply postal code, while other, smaller businesses share a business reply postal code with other businesses serviced, for example, by the same postal hub. As previously indicated, a business reply postcode does not correspond to a street address and is therefore distinguishable from a street address postal code. It is the intent of the postal service that business reply mail destined for an entity to which a dedicated business reply postal code has been assigned is sorted to a dedicated collection point (e.g., a receptacle such as a sack or bin) within, for instance, a postal hub nearest the delivery point. That is, only business reply mail intended for such a large entity is properly routed to a collection point dedicated to that entity. Once collected, the mail pieces are counted and the corresponding postal charges are assessed to the entity to which the collection point is dedicated.
Distinguished from a dedicated collection point is a shared collection point that receives business reply mail destined for multiple (i.e., at least two) business reply mail license holders, for example. Periodically, a human being removes mail pieces from the shared collection point, sorts them according to postal customer and assesses the appropriate charges to the appropriate postal customers based on quantity, class, etc. It will be appreciated that mail sorted to a shared business reply mail collection point is sorted with a lower degree of refinement than mail sorted directly to a dedicated business reply collection point. Once business reply mail pieces have been counted, and the appropriate charges assessed, the mail pieces are delivered to the post office boxes or street addresses of the postal customers to which they are destined in the ordinary course.
A common reason that revenue is not collected for the delivery of business reply mail pieces is that businesses erroneously apply to their business reply mail the street postal code corresponding to the physical location of the business, or the business's post office box, as opposed to the business reply postcode assigned to the business under the terms of a license agreement. Other reasons include the application of an incorrect or invalid license number and erroneous indications as to the class according to which mail pieces should be delivered (e.g., first class instead of second class, etc.). Currently, reliable automated processing and revenue recovery depends heavily on a postal customer's application of accurate information on the face of business reply mail associated with that customer and, where applicable, correct use of a customer-applied bar code. Accordingly, innocent mistakes as well as intentional efforts to defraud the postal system, result in mail pieces escaping the automated revenue protection mechanisms. Various manual protection schemes have been devised and implemented in accordance with which humans are relied upon to identify mail pieces that circumvent current automated revenue recovery processes. Manual systems, however, even if they could be characterized as reliable, are extremely costly.
FIGS. A, B and C are operational flowcharts illustrative of current mail flow and sortation through an outward processing center (i.e., an outgoing mail facility), an inward processing center (i.e., an incoming mail facility) and a delivery office (i.e., local branch office) serviced by the inward processing center. Although the depictions were originally produced to indicate business reply mail flow through the English mail system, the model, for all intents and purposes, obtains equally to the U.S. Mail system and to other systems throughout the world. Combined, the three drawings provide an indication as to where and when manual handling occurs and how revenue is lost.
Referring to FIG. A, business reply mail pieces are first segregated for handling separately from pre-paid postage mail, for example. Each business reply mail piece is then introduced onto a mail processing machine (MPM) in the outward processing facility for automated sortation to the appropriate inward mail center. If the automated mail processing machine is unable to sort a mail piece because, for example, the address interpretation programs are unable to decipher the address information in an acquired image of the mail piece, the mail piece is rejected to a manual sort area for sorting to the proper inward mail center. The mail sorted at the outward facility, whether automatically or manually sorted, is then loaded onto transport vehicles destined for various inward processing facilities.
At an inward processing facility, business reply mail pieces are sorted in accordance with a higher (i.e., more specific) level of sortation refinement, both manually and by automated mail processing machines, than the refinement schemes with which they are sorted at the outward facility. Mail pieces that are sorted automatically by a letter sorting machine (LSM) for transport to local delivery branches are sorted to various collection points within the inward facility. Three general types of routes to collection points labeled in FIG. A are “RS Direct Selections,” “RS Non-Direct Selections,” and “Other Street Selections.” The “RS Direct Selections” designation represents the routing of business reply mail pieces destined for business reply customers with whom a dedicated collection point is associated and whose positive identification has been facilitated by the display of complete and accurate information on the corresponding mail piece including accurate use of a business reply services postal code, proper display of a business reply license number and, where applicable, an accurate customer-applied bar code, for example. In some facilities, automated mail-piece counting and billing is applied before the sorted mail pieces are transported to the proper delivery office (i.e., local post office branch) for ultimate delivery to the customer.
The “RS Non-Direct Selections” designation represents the routing of business reply mail pieces to shared collection points. Mail pieces sorted to a shared collection point are transported wholesale (e.g., in one or more shared receptacles) to the appropriate delivery office where they are manually separated and counted and appropriate charges are manually assessed to corresponding postal customers.
The designation “Other Street Selections” represents the routing of business reply mail pieces for which insufficient information is accurately decipherable to sort and route in accordance with either a dedicated collection bin or a shared collection bin represented by the “RS Non-Direct Selections” designation. In other words, mail pieces routed to “other street selections” is collected at what amount to collection points for mail not recognizable as conforming business reply mail. A large percentage of such mail pieces is routed directly to local postal branches for delivery in accordance with street address information and bypasses all revenue collection schemes.
Referring still to FIG. A, manually sorted business reply mail pieces are similarly routed in accordance with “RS Direct Selection,” “RS Non-Direct Selections,” and “Other Street Selections” designations. On the manual side, however, mail collected at both dedicated and shared collection points is routed for manual counting, final-delivery sorting and customer account charge assessment. As with the mail routed to “Other Street Selections” under the automated scheme, mail routed to “Other Street Selections” under the manual scheme simply bypasses revenue collection schemes at the delivery office.
FIG. B is a more detailed schematic representation of the flow of business reply mail through automated sortation in the outward processing center of FIG. A and FIG. C is a more detailed schematic representation of the flow of business reply mail through automated sortation in the inward processing facility. It will be appreciated from the preceding description and FIGS. A, B and C that heavy reliance is placed upon manual handling to capture a substantial amount of business reply mail revenue.
Consequently, there exists a need for an enhanced, automated method of identifying and sorting business reply mail pieces in accordance with plural, predefined levels of refinement in a manner that reduces the required amount of human intervention and increases the amount of revenue collected.